


Saudade

by drinkbloodlikewine, whiskeyandspite



Series: Ya'aburnee [5]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Angst, Fluff, IT IS A GOOD ENDING, Longing, M/M, Mentions of graphic violence, Regret, Reunions, THEY DESERVE IT, anguish, internal struggles, red dragon canon, there is fluff here WE PROMISE YOU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-17
Updated: 2014-06-24
Packaged: 2018-02-05 02:52:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 16,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1802689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drinkbloodlikewine/pseuds/drinkbloodlikewine, https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiskeyandspite/pseuds/whiskeyandspite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>One-two-three-four. Blood-drips on the cool hard floor.</i>
</p><p>Post-finale, Will is committed for a year, and Hannibal is in prison. But does that matter?</p><p>
  <s>we do promise a good ending to this, please be patient with us!</s>
</p><p>For Mischa, who loves Red Dragon verse <3</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GhostPatches](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GhostPatches/gifts).



> _Saudade is a Portuguese word that has no direct translation in English. It describes a deep emotional state of nostalgic or profound melancholic longing for an absent something or someone that one loves. Moreover, it often carries a repressed knowledge that the object of longing may never return._

**_Northern Virginia Mental Health Institute, 2013_ **

-

Will doesn’t speak.

He lies still, with his back to every doctor and therapist and caseworker and visitor who comes to see him, to stare and to wonder, to poke and prod, plead and implore, and he waits for them to leave.

He doesn't ask about him, when Jack comes to the hospital.

The answer doesn't matter.

Jack tells him anyway, in emotionless facts and hesitant praise that does nothing to staunch the blood Will feels hot on his skin before he realizes that it’s not blood but anguish, damp against his face.

_What are you afraid of?_

They don't talk about the stray dark curls of hair found on the pillowcases and the couch when the house was combed over. The duality of fingerprints and lips still pressed into wine glasses left beside the chair in the study. Dog hair clinging to tailored plaid.

They don't talk about how obvious it was, beyond trace evidence, to anyone who knew enough to look. Threadbare clothes piled comfortably on the closet floor. A box of sugary cereal half-eaten amongst the gourmet foods. The second toothbrush, still sticky with toothpaste, on the bathroom counter.

They don't have to talk about it. Jack kept it from the press but Will knows well enough who noticed when he feels their long looks on him, itching against his skin.

Too pitiful to be considered curious, too much a curiosity to merit real sympathy.

_Unworthy and unwanted._

Will doesn’t sleep.

Not during the eight hours of induced stillness, precisely timed from the moment the plunger sinks into the hypodermic until the drug snaps him back out of sedation.

Not with worn straps that hold his arms secure at night, prescribed after he was found torn open and bleeding fast again - but not fast enough - with stitches ripped free beneath his nails.

Not when familiar words press themselves warm against his skin, and suddenly turn so bitterly cold that he shakes until he can’t draw air.

_Breathe._

“He’s going to trial soon,” Jack tells him one day. “There’s enough evidence - more than enough - to put him away for good. He won’t be able to come after you again.”

Will jerks sharply when Jack’s hand comes to rest on his shoulder, and he lets it linger despite how convulsively Will shudders and turns away from it.

“They’re going to keep you here, Will. Just for a while. Just until you’re better. I know you’re listening. I know you can hear me.”

“I know you’re stronger than all of this,” he adds after a moment, and Will can hear the thickness of doubt and guilt in his voice before he withdraws, and the door closes behind him.

Sunlight through the small window in his room, filtering cold through dirty glass. Eyes closed, Will feels it against his skin, and his fingers find the gauze wrapped in layers over his stomach. He imagines he can touch the stitches beneath it, a petty attempt to hold him together when all he needs is to tear himself in half.

He picks at the soft cotton as though it were the new scar tissue forming, to rip it open again and again.

_You just won't let it heal._

The river is still now, burdened by ice so deep there’s no movement in it. No dogs disrupt the snow that blankets the ground, no wind stirs the trees standing stark and tall around them.

Will’s voice is raw with disuse, frozen thick.

“It won’t.”

"It might."

The voice sounds similarly heavy, but Will’s entire being relaxes with the familiarity, throat works to swallow. His body is hitting its limit of consciousness, another day awake and his mind would snap.

He counts the hours by the location of the sun against his body.

"You haven’t slept,” the voice continues, and when the touch comes this time, winter-cold against Will’s cheek, he turns into it.

"There’s no quiet here," Will sighs. "Machines and people and endless motion. Tests upon tests and questions, questions..."

He swallows. "Alana took the dogs."

He misses the comforting motion of them, the snuffling and clicking of claws on the cold wood floor, the warmth of them pressed tight against him, breathing slow in sleep.

Breathing slow, slow, pressing closer to another body there, heavy with sleep.

_Motionless and dead._

Will jerks, fingers snaring in the gauze.

No warmth here, no soft sheets heated by the bodies beneath them. A mattress, unyielding, and a coarse blanket that he draws around himself anyway, that does nothing to shake the frost from his bones.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” Will murmurs. “No one’s supposed to be here.”

Fingers curling soft against his scalp, wrapping in his hair and tugging just gently until he closes his eyes.

The ice splinters, but there’s no movement beneath it.

“I thought you were gone,” he sighs, sees his breath plume in the air, joined by another.

Will’s breath hitches sharp and he forces his eyes open again, drops his hand from his hair to return it to his stomach, to pick at the adhesive, a desperate need to pry and tear and rip until there’s nothing left, to tear out his organs with his bare hands.

His fingers graze the angry skin outside the gauze and he feels lips moving soft across it instead.

_Kiss me there._

“Stay with me.” Will chokes on the words and draws himself into the blanket. “Please.”

_Pathetic._

He’s shaking again, intermittent spasms through his body, eyes closing and opening in jerks and quick flutters. A hand slides over Will’s eyelids, soft, and keeps them closed.

"Until you sleep," the voice assures, curled gently on the vowels, accented.

A laugh, faint, sends shivers through Will’s bones and he turns to his side, fingers curled against his skin.

"But you must try, Will."

A warmth, heavy, against Will’s back. The cracks deepen in the ice.

_Breathe._

Will turns into the hand over his eyes, presses his mouth parted with trembling breaths against his own palm and lets it rest there.

“They told me about you. In the hospital and right out again.” He draws into the arm wrapped over his middle, across the bandages, and feels a ghost of movement against his hip, thumb stroking fondly against his skin. “I knew you were stronger than me.”

A smile, faint, that falters and breaks as soon as it appears.

“Didn’t have a chance in hell, did I?”

He swallows, dry, and curls tighter to ease the shaking, seeking the weight against his back, the tender assurances against his neck. The sensation of heat against his skin, just behind his ear where he finds his hand and draws it down again.

“Stay with this, Will.”

A shudder, that almost sounds like a laugh.

“Where else would I go?”

Their breaths mingle in the cold air, one warm cloud between them.

"You hide. Behind the pendulum swing." The hand presses firmly against the gauze, enough for Will to hiss but not move away.

_You need this. Feel this. Deserve this._

“Where does your exquisite mind go, Will?" The words are breathed against his ear, so soft that the brush of lips is almost expected. "You once went to your river, with the dogs, waded out alone. Did the current get too strong? Why did you bring me there, Will?"

The ice splits.

"I wanted you to see," Will rasps, eyes closed tight, the fingers against them pressing hot.

Beneath the ice the water runs black.

"I trusted you."

Tacky. Thick.

Will chokes and shudders, teeth grit and eyes closed as he whines. The hand against his stomach softens.

"Breathe."

"I _trusted_ you!"

A hand soothes Will’s curls back from his forehead.

"We could have gone," Hannibal whispers, "together."

_One-two-three-four. Blood-drips on the cool hard floor._

"You and I. No one else."

Will swallows hard and his voice cracks.

“Only us.”

He watches, beneath the hand that smooths his hair in comforting strokes. He watches as the ice sinks in jagged sharp angles and disappears into the waters that run faster than he’s ever seen, washing up against the shore. Over it, now, in waves, lapping against the place where they sat once and were quiet together and rushing against his feet and when he sees it now he sees that it’s not black but red, pooling crimson.

“You knew what I was.”

“No.”

“You _knew_ what I was, Will.”

“Yes,” he gasps instead, soft. “Yes. And I still came back.”

His voice hitches in his throat, choking as the waters fold around him.

“I can’t stop.”

"But you must try, Will."

A trembling sigh, as he feels the weight over him - the arm wrapped across him - go heavy.

Still.

Motionless.

_Hannibal, don’t._

“Please.”

He begs, as the river rises higher.

“Stay with me.”

And he lets the darkness take him, and sleeps beneath the waters.

-||-

**_Baltimore State Hospital For The Criminally Insane, 2014_ **

-

If he closes his eyes for long enough, he can hear the music.

The slow cello melody, sombre, heavy enough to sink in. And subtly, carefully, barely there beneath the surface, the violins. A sensual melody, gentle.

"Your standards have slipped, Dr. Lecter."

The music swells, settles around them. Cloying smoke filters through the notes, twisting tendrils around them until they fall dissonant.

"Disquieted." The consonants are clipped, the smirk heavy on the words as they carry. "Disorganized. Lacks the finesse of your usual flavor. Tell me, doctor, is this boredom?"

Hannibal sighs, eyes open just enough to see his own hands folded, his right knee over his left. He hears the motion of Will shifting before he sees it, a languid slouch, head tilting from one shoulder to the other.

"It is a way to pass the time," Hannibal responds. "Restoring order from chaos."

Will makes a thoughtful noise. “So few people allow time to flow unhindered,” he replies mildly. “But I suppose there isn’t really much of a choice anymore.”

A crackle of embers, faint, and a soft exhalation. The scent of cheap smoke, acrid and bitter, thickening against Hannibal’s sense of smell.

“I appreciate that you’ve kept our appointment. It would be an unfortunate break in routine to miss it,” Will continues.

Movement, as Will shifts to cross his right leg over his left, and rests his arm across his lap.

“What does your routine look like now, doctor?”

Another drag, warm against the lips that curve to meet the cigarette.

Hannibal watches, the tilt of the lips, the narrowed eyes. Fingers slim against the filter of the cigarette that doesn’t burn out. He knows those hands, remembers their drag along his back, clawed and trembling in pleasure.

He remembers them soft against his lips, parting them, pressing to his tongue.

Will's endless fascination with his mouth, the things it said, the things it did.

"Developed and sustained," Hannibal responds, indifferent. "But this is your session, Will."

Will laughs, lips stretched into a smile that doesn’t waver, and holds anything but amusement.

"On the contrary, doctor, the sessions are lost on me. What good will they do me now? Where I am?"

Hannibal blinks, eyes on Will's as he takes another slow drag of the cigarette.

"Considering where you are, Will, you certainly need them more than me."

His eyes, wide pale blue, no longer catch the light when they meet Hannibal’s own, and his quick smile never reaches them.

“And how does that make you feel?” Will’s tongue traces his lower lip, draws it between his teeth as he leans forward, elbows on his knees. “It must have been infuriating when they declared you,” he tastes the word, “insane. It must eat at you.”

He seems pleased with himself for the pun, but it’s short-lived before he leans back again, shakes his head, and the venom abates, a curious softness in his eyes instead.

“You had me fooled, anyway.” Will ashes the cigarette against the arm of the chair. “My trust has always been my weakness. Too easily given. Too easily allowed.”

Hannibal watches the ash land, some over the edge of the arm and to the ground where it soaks into the thick dark pool beneath Will's feet.

It's not yet spread to his own.

"I never lied to you, Will," he says softly, tilting his own chin up, watching Will mimic. "I omitted. And you still knew me."

Another parting of lips, soft exhale. He watches the silver smoke leave Will's mouth and seep between his nostrils, a never ending loop.

Ash.

Blood.

Rinse, repeat.

"I did not lie to you about your trust, either, Will. You do give it too easily. But every weakness can be manipulated."

Will's mouth moves in something like a smile, eyes lowering as his jaw works.

"You omitted that last part, too, when I trusted you.”

There’s something missing in his gaze, some particular element gone, snuffed out. A studious emptiness. And despite how Hannibal knows them so intimately they are unfamiliar now.

“You omitted a great deal of things to me, actually, when I still chose to know you. Unremarkable. Pathetic.” A pause, lips parting to allow a deep breath to pass, curled with smoke. “Worth nothing.”

“Perhaps the gun was appropriate after all,” Will considers softly. “It would have been a pity to put my unworthy hands on you again.”

Will rests his hand against his leg, embers reflecting bright in the dark wetness gathering sticky and thick across the fabric of his pants.

“You know that they’re going to remove you from me, don’t you? The parts that you didn’t already cut out yourself.” Ashes disappear into the spreading dark. “I wonder if they’ll give you the same courtesy.”

"They cannot remove you from me, Will, any more than they could remove me from you." His own lips quirk a moment and he unfolds his legs, leaning forward, wrists to knees.

"We are not equal, Will. We are parts that make up a sum."

Hannibal smiles, tilts his head.

"You never come and you never go because you are always here. We are incarcerated together."

At this, an arch smile from Will, suddenly pleased.

“An interesting choice of words.”

Smoke trails freely from Will’s lips now, even as he lets the cigarette slip from slender fingers and extinguish itself in the pooling blackness at his feet. He braces his hands against the armrests and stands slowly, unfurling from the chair with his chin at an imperious angle, amusement in the cold blue of his eyes.

“Another omission perhaps, this time from yourself.”

The fine shirt Will wears - one that Hannibal bought for him, had tailored for him, even dressed him in once, so that he could feel each inch of the elegant material fall against Will’s body - shifts as Will stands and reveals a gaping rend, pale stomach split in two, from hip to hip by the smooth movement of the knife through his soft skin.

Blood gathers without slowing, without end beneath his feet, as Will closes the distance between them. The same as so many times before when their session would end, to bring them together again for the only therapy that ever worked for either.

“You weren’t meant to spend so much time here,” Will observes, gently. Quiet concern, never pushing too much, always drawing back when he met resistance. “It will be much harder for you than for me. Away from your work. Away from your hobbies and little pleasures.”

Will settles over Hannibal, not yet seated against him, but perched with legs splayed across him. Darkness spills across Hannibal’s thighs as the wound stretches wide.

“Away from me.”

He presses a hand against the back of the chair beside the doctor, and runs his other fingers slow over the raw flesh opened in his stomach. Will’s lips part as if in sympathy to it and he leans nearer to Hannibal’s ear. Smoke curls from his lips in an aching whisper, soft as the sound of his blood dripping against the floor.

“Would you miss me?”

_What would I do without you?_

"Can you miss something that you never lost?" Hannibal muses quietly, hands not moving to hold Will closer. It would be useless, futile. To him Will is smoke.

Smoke and blood and words.

A meticulous forgetting.

Above him, Will sighs, a gentle sound, forgiving, pitying.

"Or never had?"

"I had you," Hannibal says, tilts his head back to keep Will in his sight, to watch him. "I have you."

"You have memories," Will says softly, hand up, now, to trace blood over Hannibal's mouth, eyes following the motion. "Of muted words and empty promises and lies."

"Omissions," Hannibal murmurs. Will's fingers press the iron blood against his tongue.

"You have shadows, Hannibal," Will continues. "Phantom limbs. Perhaps we were equal in the end, and nothing more."

Hannibal watches, turns his head to deliberately suck the blood fed him from drying fingers. He tastes tobacco and ozone.

"Then we will be imprisoned as equals," he says.

"There's one of those interesting words again," Will murmurs. "If only you hadn't cleaned up after Randall quite so neatly, it might even be true.” He runs a hand along Hannibal's face, consoling, with no sensation of touch or its former tenderness - only emptiness, stricken from his memory.

“But then, we both know well enough that abandonment requires expectations."

Will leans against Hannibal, sinks into him, no longer warm and heavy but weightless, and he draws his hands unfelt down Hannibal's arms. His fingers curl against the scars reopened on Hannibal's wrists and Will snares them to wrap Hannibal's arms around himself.

As though Hannibal were still holding him in fierce adoration, to speak soft words and rub the worry from his back with open hands.

As though he were still holding Will to not let him fall, feeling his heart shudder and slow in desperate spasms.

An absence, intangible in Hannibal’s embrace as their blood mingles from shared stigmata and drips from the chair to the pool spreading beneath them.

"I would have missed the dogs. The forest. The river. I would have missed all of it, if it meant that I would go with you."

Will traces his fingertips dark with blood against Hannibal's lips, again, follows their lines with familiarity.

"I was yours," Will breathes, and a tendril of smoke trails from his mouth. "Only yours. And I wonder, when you truly realize that, how difficult it will be for you to reconcile the dissonance between your morals and your choices."

It's a balance, bare and shifting, and as always, it tips.

Will tastes like smoke and feels like nothing. But whatever part of Hannibal's mind still keeps him here allows this, the vestigial closeness and desires, the residual warmth of Will's skin.

His mind conjures up memories of the soft sighs, the light fingers, breathless words and gentle bend of Will’s body.

Ghosts. Always ghosts.

"I would forgo morals," he murmurs.

"That, in itself, is a choice," Will responds. He arches back, wound splitting wide when he unfurls from Hannibal's lap and slides free of his arms. But he hesitates, leans low over him again, near enough that his lips would brush soft against Hannibal's cheek if there were any touch left in his memory.

"A choice that means that I can go - tonight, now - and you will stay still."

He draws his fingers down Hannibal's jaw, leaving crimson lines in their wake, and turns to leave. Shrugging into his coat, looping his scarf comfortably around his neck, as a faint smile appears, gentle amusement.

"Only you."

The clock strikes 8:30, and Will is gone.

-

There is no music when Hannibal opens his eyes, just the quick rap against the cell to alert him to supper.

8:30.

"I'm sorry, Dr. Lecter," a familiar voice, always polite. Hannibal doesn’t move. "I won't wake you to take the tray."

8:30.

Will is gone.

"Thank you, Barney, no need to apologize." Still he doesn't move. Lays still. Considers.

_You will stay still._

"They said the profiler who shot you was discharged today," the guard says quietly, setting the dinner tray down, hoping it would spur Hannibal to take it.

_Only you._

"It made the front page. Just there in the corner."

_Moral dissonance._

"Thank you, Barney," he murmurs again, tongue parting his lips gently before he moves to stand.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "All I ask is a simple quid pro quo. An answer of yours for an answer of mine."

**_Baltimore State Hospital For The Criminally Insane, 2015_ **

-

At the sound of the bolt sliding home, Will has to resist the urge to scratch the scar that suddenly itches sharp beneath his shirt.

He waits, lets his gaze go unfocused as he takes in the hallway. Cold stone, echoing emptiness.

Desolate.

Cells spread to his left and Will tucks the file deeper beneath his arm, fingers trailing the stone to his right as he mirrors the steps of the orderly making her rounds.

Will counts the cells until there’s one left, and feels an acute awareness that Hannibal knows he’s there already.

He would think of Molly to steady himself, but he doesn’t allow her image to appear. Not here.

Not with him.

The doctor is spread long across the thin mattress that Chilton hasn’t yet taken from him in a fit of spite, and Will is surprised to feel so little when he sees him there. Thinner, beneath the rough hospital coveralls. More pale, visible in the arm draped across Hannibal’s eyes, but for the raised scar along his wrist, sleeves folded neatly to his elbows.

Will finds that his fingers have grasped the bars without his intent and he draws them away. He places the file prominently across his lap and takes a seat in the chair the orderly has placed for him.

For a long moment, neither speak. The orderly steps away to grant them the barest pretense of privacy and around them, the rest of the prison continues as before.

Noise, Will notes, much more noise than either of them had once been used to. Though not as loud as the hospital. Perhaps not yet.

"A return to old routines, Will?" Hannibal's voice sounds off, tilted. No longer the stable, calm rhythm. Now something lurks beneath it that could border on mania.

"That abominable aftershave certainly brings back memories of much quieter times."

He slides his arm away from his face and turns to look at Will properly through the bars. Slowly, his lips curl into a smile.

_I told you to run, Will._

"Some routines are easier to change than others," Will responds.

He feels Hannibal's gaze laid heavy against his skin, pressing like fingers. Studying. Memorizing.

Searching.

Will is lean, healthy - no longer hiding beneath ill-fitted clothes and untidy curls of hair. He combed it today, before putting on the nice shirt that Molly got him for his birthday, the coat tailored to fit his long arms, the tie she liked that seemed just a little too pricey so he saves it only for special occasions.

Particular occasions.

Hannibal stands, unfurling slow from the bed, and Will’s breathing doesn’t change, despite how he has to remind himself to do so.

_Run_.

Will studies the books neatly arranged on shelves bolted to the wall. Psychiatric journals stacked on the small desk with an unsurprising amount of correspondence beside them. Sketches of places Will doesn't recognize, drawn from memory.

"You've kept busy."

"Oh, one must in a place like this, Will. And I am so used to my little pleasures." He comes close enough to rest his hands against the sliding tray on his side of the bars.

His eyes are alert, not wide, and dark as Will remembers.  For a moment, there is something in them he recognizes.

"You look well, Will," he murmurs, slipping seamlessly to French. “It seems family life suits you. You were always one to thrive in company."

_We could go somewhere. France, maybe._

Molly had wanted to go there for their honeymoon, and something in Will’s expression changed enough that she simply continued with other suggestions, as though it had never been mentioned at all.

They went to Hawaii instead.

Someplace warm.

“In good company, yes,” answers Will, in English. He rests his hands against the file on his lap, and allows himself to look away from the books, towards Hannibal again, studying him as though at a distance and not mere feet apart.

He knows better than to look too closely into the void.

The familiar lines of Hannibal’s face have drawn sharper now, their angles deeper, the softness slowly ground away by tedium and testing and solitude. A harshness in his body that mirrors that in the edges of his voice, fiercer than before. More predatory.

And caged, Will reminds himself. “Are they treating you well?”

"Are you concerned?" Hannibal asks, tone dropping, back to English himself for the moment. His head tilts, eyes narrow, and that revolting smile returns that renders Hannibal someone other than himself.

"They allow me my books," he relents, at length, "though it is humiliating having to write with simple implements."

He eyes the pen he can see in Will’s pocket. Returns his gaze up.

"The food is vile. No less so, I suppose, than what you had to suffer in hospital. Have you had relapses, Will? Do you dream?"

Will lifts his chin a little at this, and allows a faint smile. Polite.

“I’m no longer in your care, doctor,” Will reminds him, not ungently. He tries not to think of ice cracking sharp, sinking into blackened waters that rush the shores red against his feet.

Will clears his throat, and his fingers spread across the file as his jaw works, turning over the words in his mouth before he finally speaks them.

“I would appreciate your help. The Jacobi and Leeds murders. I’m sure you’ve read about them."

"I would appreciate a straight answer, Will," comes the silken reply.  "It is frightfully dull here, and you were always such an excellent conversation partner."

His eyes slip to the file on Will’s lap before he blinks, returns his eyes to the profiler.

_Ex-profiler._

"All I ask is a simple quid pro quo. An answer of yours for an answer of mine."

A pause draws long between them, and Hannibal waits. He knows the murders, he finds he still enjoys the newspaper when he is permitted to read it. He also knows that Will Graham must be truly desperate to be here.

He will give.

And Hannibal is patient.

"You remember I can make your time with me quite worth your while,” he says gently, prompting the beginning of his request. "They are both beautiful, fascinating killings. But I'm surprised your mind hasn’t helped you."

Will reminds himself that he can leave. He can stand without a word and take his file and walk out the doors of the prison and never see Hannibal again. Give the case files back to Jack, again. Resign, again. Go back home to Molly and Willy and the dogs and boat motors and only see Hannibal in nightmares that wake him in a cold sweat and dreams that wake him with memories far worse.

He can leave.

And then there will be more. Bodies and blood and families just like his own little family with mirrors like ice reflecting bright in their eyes.

Will swallows, a tell that he knows Hannibal will see and drink up like wine, and slides the file to him through the tray.

“My mind is clearer than it’s ever been,” Will assures him softly. “But I’ve always valued your opinions.”

A hint of bitterness in his voice, acrid. Like smoke.

“No lies. No omissions,” Will insists, and then defers. “After you.”

Another pause, then Hannibal takes the file without yet looking at it. Eyes only for Will.

"I will need time, Will, to attend to this properly. Won't you stay with me?" The smile is soft but the eyes anything but.

_Stay still._

He doesn't wait for a response, before offering, as promised, more.

"Have you considered a disfigurement?" he asks, tone, for just a moment, businesslike, serious. Reminiscent of past sessions in Will’s classroom, carefully dissecting kills that Hannibal had just as carefully executed.

He flips the file open and quickly skims the information as he listens to Will reply.

Will watches him more openly than before, as he turns through the pages, and Will wonders how it makes him feel to see death laid bare again.

It’s been a long time.

“Yes,” Will finally answers. “I’ve considered it. The mirrors, broken, but used to replace their eyes. To watch himself as though they were watching him.” He draws a deeper breath, just audible, and regrets it as soon as he does, painfully aware of the scrutiny with which Hannibal is observing every sound, movement, reaction that Will gives him.

“He’s concerned with his appearance. There’s a pride about it but,” Will’s eyes narrow a little, pensive. “But it’s damaged.”

For an instant, Will nearly smiles, a mirthless amusement as he recalls how easily they’ve always spoken about these things, above all else. Lifetimes built on blood and horror. The common ground first shared between them now joining them again.

“Quid pro quo,” Will echoes, and he reminds himself to breathe.

A gentle click of Hannibal's tongue, pleased with the interpretation, with hearing Will return to himself. He doesn’t yet look up, allowing the reports and analyses to filter through his mind, settle.

"Oh, my darling Will," he murmurs. "You have yet to disappoint me."

When Hannibal flips to the photos, his eyes slip out of focus. Lost, for a moment, in the memories of a kill, the feel of one. A cool longing that is shuttered almost immediately.

"How often did you think of me," he asks, eyes up to Will’s, sudden enough to catch him, too, before a shutter. "In the hospital?"

_Stay with me._

Will’s fingers shift against his legs and he stills their movement as soon as he feels it.

Itching pain across his stomach. Raw sandpaper roughness in his throat.

Conversations shared with no one but himself, until he couldn’t speak anymore.

He wets his lips, and breathes past a pale smile.

“I couldn’t stop.”

No lies. No omissions.

For a brief moment, Hannibal looks at Will as he once did; adoration and softness, a trust and closeness he had not shared with another since.

Then his tongue parts his lips and he looks away again, quiet in his study of the documents.

"Another two bullets, Will,” he says softly, in French, "would have been enough."

In front of him, Will stills, freezes like a spooked animal before forcing a soft breath. His expression, admirably, does not change.

"Do you have schematics?" he asks suddenly, English brisk and serious again before he looks up. "The homes of the victims?"

It takes Will a moment more to draw himself back. To clear the river again.

To think of the ocean, instead, brilliant blue against white sand and lovely Molly with her dark hair that bounces when she laughs.

No. Not her. Not here. Not now.

_Stay with this._

“There’s diagrams, there, of the rooms where the deaths occurred. Different than where the bodies were found in a few instances. He moved them. Should be room plans anywhere there was evidence. There’s pictures of the houses.”

A pause, head tilting at a familiar angle, curiosity sharply piqued now - more than Will means to show but he can’t help himself.

“Why?”

"Were their yards fenced in?" Hannibal asks, ignoring Will’s question for the moment. At the confirmation, he hums, and closes the file.

"Do you know that blood looks black in moonlight, Will?" he murmurs, leaning his weight on the tray again. His lips tilt. "It's quite extraordinary. Keeps its distinctive sheen. And this killer of yours is a fan of seeing it that way."

He licks his lips, a brief motion, and smiles.

"And one would not want to frighten the neighbors, seeing one so clad in blood and nothing else."

Will’s eyes widen, incrementally, at Hannibal’s analysis. He feels a steady swing behind his eyelids and his pulse quickens before he can stop it.

Their yards. He’s using their yards to choose them.

People with big yards, fenced and secured, who also have children.

Yards that afford a distinct privacy. Inside without being inside.

Similar schematics, similar designs, distantly observed from somewhere beyond their respective states.

Will draws a breath, sharp.

Hannibal’s eyes drop, for a moment, to take in Will fully, a scan from head to toe and back.

"Come closer, Will,” he requests, watches in delight as Will’s brows furrow, taken aback by the unusual request. He drops a hand to the pen in his pocket, and Hannibal snorts softly.

"Dear boy, I don't need a weapon to kill you, I would use my hands. Stay... intimate." The consonant clicks and Hannibal smiles again.

"Of course I can't by any means force intimacy on you, it must come on its own, as you once did. And you did promise me this. Come closer."

Will stands slowly. His gaze lingers on Hannibal's hands, slender fingers long enough to be called elegant, pressed against the metal tray. Hands that he's watched cook, draw, fold paper into little animals, play instruments. Hands that once ran warm across his skin, wrapped in his messy curls of hair, pressed bruises into his thighs and even deeper still than that.

Closed against his throat.

Around the knife.

_Trust too easily given._

Will removes his pen from his pocket and drops it on the chair behind him. He moves until he's standing just out of arm’s reach, and does not react when Hannibal draws a soft breath.

The cheap aftershave reeks against his clothes, pungent and chemical. Beneath it, grey remains of a cigarette smoked that morning. Coffee. Gin. Dogs. A perfume, sweet like oranges. Floral laundry detergent. The ocean. Sun. Beneath that, Will.

Just Will.

He shifts his shoulders as though to shrug off the scrutiny.

“Your turn, doctor."

_Trust too easily allowed._

Hannibal’s head tilts as though on a pivot, a strangely inhuman motion that, disturbingly, looks perfectly normal on the man. When he smiles, though, it is utterly genuine. No mania, no disturbing energy.

"I have taken it,” he tells him honestly, leaning barely closer before he's stopped by his confines. "Unless you want to come closer still."

Will keeps his attention focused on the file, refusing Hannibal the pleasure of seeing his eyes from so near. He presses his lower lip between his teeth in hesitation.

Imagines they’re Hannibal’s teeth, tugging soft against his mouth.

Imagines they’re Hannibal’s teeth, tearing out the tongue of a nurse the year before.

Will takes a step back. He shakes his head gently, no anger in the softness of his expression, no bitterness. Just awareness, hard-won.

“What else can you tell me?” Will asks, suddenly aching tired. “I know you’re smarter than him. Smarter than me.” Black humor in his voice, mirthless.

Hannibal’s lips spread wider, teeth white beneath.

"I have the same file you did, Will. Appealing to my intellectual vanity will not get more from me where there is nothing else to find." He tongues his bottom lip softly, mirrors Will’s gentle gesture.

"Perhaps if you had more files. More photographs."

He pushes away from the tray and stands straight, somehow still powerful in the jumpsuit.

"I would very much like you to visit me again, Will. Perhaps keep a standing Wednesday appointment," he smiles.

"No."

The response is quiet, earnest, no emotions either way and Hannibal's eyes narrow gently.

"May I see the scar, Will?"

Will's eyes flash to meet Hannibal's for only a blink before he turns them away again, avoidance masked as indifference but unable to keep a furrow out of his brow, a twitching tension from his jaw. The smallest reactions he can allow from the disgust that roils violent through him.

And just as suddenly, his jaw sets and his eyes level on Hannibal, narrowed sharp as he tugs up the front of his shirt from where it's tucked neatly into his pants.

He knows Chilton is watching, no doubt with rapt interest, and doesn't give a shit.

The long curve of the scar is pale white against his tanned skin, curving in an almost elegant line from his left hip and up beneath his right ribs.

No softness now, no embers of warmth. Will squeezes his shirt to stop his hand from shaking but he can't hide the shudder in his breath or the icy disdain in his eyes.

Hannibal’s eyes linger, memorizing the pale mark, so long and wide over the stomach he had once splayed one hand to cover. His fingers flex now, spread and curl, as though he were touching it.

_It was meant to kill you, Will._

_We were meant to go._

Will holds it there, just long enough to let Hannibal see the last memory that he left with Will, the last mark his skin will ever bear from him, and drops his shirt again.

“I’ll send more files, as I get them,” Will intones, gathering his pen, his other paperwork from the chair. “There’s a number on the file that goes to a machine. If you think of anything else, you can call and talk to the machine.”

At his words, Hannibal blinks.

"Can't I call your home?" he asks, tone feigning genuine query, though he knows his answer. Will levels him with a look and moves to leave.

"Do you think of me often, Will?" he raises his voice, just enough.

_Would you miss me?_

Will stops.

He takes in the man in front of him. The familiar lines of the body that Will once clung to in adoration. The angles of the face carved sharp and handsome even beyond the toll that time here has taken, once memorized with lips and fingers and whispered promises of summer.

The question hanging between them that Hannibal would never have lowered himself to ask if he hadn't been worn down to a desperation that Will knows all too well from his own time, held, lost and alone.

But the water moves smoothly now, and Will’s expression softens into a look that Hannibal's never seen from him before.

Pity.

No lies. No omissions.

"No," he responds softly. With relief. "I don't."

Will doesn't wait for another question. Doesn't have any more questions to ask, of Hannibal or himself. And with all the strength left in him, he leaves.

He counts the doors out of the hospital and when he reaches the fifth one it's only as sun falls across his face that he realizes he's shaking, a violent tremor that forces him into a crouch, gasping.

_Breathe._

He closes his eyes and forces them open again just as quickly.

_Stay with me._

Will stands again and checks behind him, finds only his own hand curled in his hair and chokes a laugh, a joyless shudder.

_A dismemberment._

"No," Will grits through his teeth. "An amputation."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> reminder that the voting for the [Hannibal Blog Awards 2014](http://huuuuughdancy.tumblr.com/post/88854249543/the-voting-is-starting-today) is still open! both Whiskey (sun-to-sirius) and myself (drinkbloodlikewine) are nominated for Best Fanfics and would be honored to have your vote if you choose to share it with us <3
> 
> you can vote for two names per poll, which works out pretty well for us! [cast your votes for Best Fanfics here](http://poll.fm/4u4p5)!
> 
> be sure to take a look around at all of the amazing nominees in all the categories, and show your favorites some love!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _A dissonance for a moment, and Hannibal smiles, one arm languid over his eyes as his other conducts. From dissonance to order._
> 
> _And from order to chaos._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It helps if you play My Sweet Prince by Placebo as you read <3

Lights go out later in summer, perhaps to account for the longer days, perhaps as a small mercy to those that count their hours by the sun. Regardless, the procedure is much the same as winter.

There is a rhythmic tapping, slow, deliberate, as the guard paces just outside the first security door. One step for two of an average man's heart beat. Over and over against the thick concrete floor, metronomic.

Hannibal times his own breaths between both beats presented and closes his eyes.

He had once composed like this, listening to the sounds of his house and the living creatures outside it. The wind, the slow falling of snow or leaves in fall. Natural rhythms were easier to work with, they were organic, had a beat to them already, and only required soft detailing.

One hand comes up, fingers lax and wrist loose, before it bends, a gentle roll of the limb until it is palm up against the artificially controlled warm air. And then it swings, a pendulum to match one Hannibal had timed a piece to before.

He counts six steps, three breaths, and lets his fingers splay.

Strings.

Low, careful and quiet. The beginning of a much deeper sound.

The sun is just above the water when Will cracks the screen door to let the dogs out for the night. They barrel past him into the yard, leaping against each other to burn off their remaining energy, kicking up grass behind them.

Waves wash up against the shore not far from where he stands, still for a moment, to listen to the wind sway the palms. He smiles when their movement syncs with the break of water across the sand.

He shuts the screen but leaves the door open to let the night air cool the house, and Will rubs a hand along Molly’s back as he passes her in the kitchen.

He promises to do the dishes after he reads to Willy.

A funny thing, their shared names. Some sort of affirmation, Will considers, as he heads upstairs with his fingers trailing the wall.

They curl inwards, soft a moment, before relaxing.

Higher strings now, the violas and violins. Still just a shiver, a curtain swaying in the breeze, a sigh from warm lips.

Gentle.

Hannibal’s tongue parts his lips and he levels his hand, stopped fully for a moment before he caresses the air, strokes one way then another.

He remembers the way the music echoed in his kitchen, a heady, warm sound perfectly complimenting the aromas hanging within. He remembers fingers as soft as his, through his hair and down his neck in gentle distraction.

He curls his own and the strings give way to the reed instruments, paced just lower than the footsteps by the door, a feeling more than a sound.

Will finds him in bed already, book open across his lap, and teases Willy about skipping ahead without him. He drops into the chair beside the bed and steals the book back with a slight smile to find where they left off the night before.

A story about a girl who lives amongst monsters in a lightless labyrinth, the boy who finds her there, and how they help each other escape.

He’s asleep before Will can finish a second chapter. He marks their place and shuts off the light, closing the door behind him.

Molly catches him on the stairs, fingers twining with Will’s to draw him nearer. She leans in to kiss him just gently. He wraps his hand in her hair and then she presses closer, firmer, until he’s back against the wall and she grins against his mouth when he cautions her with amusement that the stairs probably aren’t the best place for this.

She disagrees, and her breath is warm and sweet like wine when he kisses her again.

A dissonance for a moment, and Hannibal smiles, one arm languid over his eyes as his other conducts. From dissonance to order.

And from order to chaos.

The footsteps stumble, are joined by another set and the brass joins the reeds, humming flat where the other instruments play sharp.

Discord, disorder, _displeasure_. Stark brows furrow under the heavy arm, sleeves rolled up precise just above the elbows, and Hannibal holds his breath until the footsteps return to their beat.

Two heartbeats between.

One breath.

"Flutes," he murmurs, behind his eyes and in his ears the chaos ebbs to a single instrument, a careful new path.

The harmony of their shared breath pulls short when a rising chorus of barking snaps Will from his brief reverie. He goes tense beneath Molly's hands and he waits long enough that Molly's brow creases to see him so sharp and still and pale. Swallowing hard, Will listens with nerves that itch through his skin and pull tight across his stomach.

_Do you think of me often?_

The dogs' voices quiet and Will draws Molly's hand away from where his heart stutters against his ribs. He kisses her palm in apology and she understands.

She always understands, and he tells himself that it’s enough.

Will gathers her close to him and fights down the guilt that rises like bile in his throat from another moment ruined. He's just on edge after all the travel, he tells her, and he wants to believe it when he says it. Wants to believe there’s not an eager thrill that tastes metallic on his tongue and in the hum of his pulse.

_Have you had relapses, Will?_

The smell of fire and blood still burns fresh in Will’s nose from the Dolarhyde mansion, and he buries his face in Molly’s hair to try to replace it. She always smells like citrus and sun and he wonders how she does it.

Molly doesn't let him linger, doesn’t let him dwell - just teases Will lightly for not finishing the dishes and he accepts it with a pale smile. He follows her to the bedroom, rubbing the sweat from his palms against his pants as his feet fall steady against the stairs.

_Two-three-four-breathe._

A violin joins the flute, both weaving their own melodies around each other, not close enough to touch or tangle yet, but teasing and tempting in their proximity. Beneath rises the soft pulse of the cellos, below that still, a double bass.

The tenuous truce hangs between the instruments just a moment longer, before the underlying melody returns, carried by the brass and the reed instruments in a gentle meandering like a pendulum swing.

Hannibal sighs, drops his hand and presses both against his eyes in a slow languid stretch as around him the music swells. As he remembers different fingers in his hair, breath that sounds as soft as the pale strings in their slow harmony, lips that part and press and tilt.

The strings start to overpower the wind instruments, like a river rising over its banks and spreading thick over earth thirsty for it. Hannibal’s jaw sets, his brows draw in displeasure and he exhales quickly, a harsh sound.

Molly runs her hand across Will's chest to soothe away the sigh when he finally lays down again. She speaks lightly of all the little things he missed while he was away. He listens, lets her voice carry softly to him, and rests his arm across his eyes.

Her mention of the false alarm, the threat that sent her and Willy into police protection, is conspicuous in its absence. Will knows she wants to ask and is grateful when she doesn't, but still feels the swell of curiosity as she watches him with something like wariness.

It was only recently that the nightmares had become so rare as to be notable when they happened. And then Jack arrived and made his case to them both.

Will would have stayed, if Molly had asked him to. She hadn't, deferring instead to his best judgment. Saw the pull in him, the uneasy tug towards a life he tried so hard to convince her and himself was over. She knew Will's answer before he did, and warned Jack in no uncertain terms that she'd have his hide if anything happened.

That night, Will woke shaking lost - reaching out for another body - and found Molly instead.

Will tells her how much he missed her. Something he knows he means.

She curls against him and whispers increasingly torrid ways in which she missed him, too, and Will laughs, relieved, to feel his pulse start to hum a steady rhythm. Their mouths carry the quickening movement of his heart when they meet again.

He closes his eyes and in his mind a mirror shatters. It's when he feels Molly freeze in his arms that Will realizes she heard it, too.

And then silence.

Nothing.

The beat itself stopped for a moment as Hannibal waits, hands above his head in soft repose, eyes on the ceiling.

The strings hold a constant note, low and ominous, building just barely in volume until the beat restarts and everything shatters; a cacophony of noise from every instrument that somehow stays just barely confined in a melody. Still listening, following, playing off each other.

Hannibal bends, just enough to arch his back off the bed, brows furrow barely at the miasma of sound, before he lays still and lets it envelope him.

A chaos of his own making.

He thinks of the scars against his wrists, still visible and raised against his skin, he thinks of the night he got them, the dizziness from loss of blood, not helped by the bucket he stood on, the words that slid smooth and cloying from the younger man in front of him.

The killer by proxy.

 _Oh, Will_ , he thinks, parts his lips on a sigh and closes his eyes, _it could have been intimate without one_.

Will is certain it’s nothing, as a breath of wind carries the curtains inward. So certain that he insists Molly stay in the bedroom and forces himself to stand slowly. He tries not to let the old habits sink into him, grab him again and make him fierce and fast.

It’s happened before and he knows it scares them, and they look at him in those moments like they don’t know who he is. Will understands it. In those moments he’s not sure who he is, either.

Will leaves the room. Leaves the gun he keeps in the drawer beside his bed that his fingers itch to reach for just in case. Leaves the hallway and follows the stairs steadily downward.

Someone outside, perhaps, dropping a bottle.

A break-in to a car, one without an alarm.

The mirror at the bottom of the stairs, with a black emptiness across Will’s reflection where a piece is missing.

Will turns just as the body drives into him and pins him hard against the wall, cracking ribs and driving the air from him. He snaps his elbow back and catches the killer’s jaw sharply, and Will shouts as he ducks the shard that swings for him in return.

Not them.

A desperate litany now - not them, not them, not him and not her, not Willy with his sly smile and not Molly with her lilting laugh.

Not her, with glass pressed into her eyes.

_See?_

A soft click of his tongue and Hannibal’s symphony grows, spurred by the return of the even footfalls, the underlying white noise of his blood beneath his skin, against his ears, behind his eyes.

_I don’t find you that interesting._

The brash words and harsh tones, constant rejection and slow realization that perhaps they have enough to talk about to no longer feel heavy, forced.

_You will._

Soft hands and panted breaths and motion, constant motion over and over. Splayed thighs and arched back and the soft sheen of sweat that softened the angles of Will’s body, the sharpness of his jaw, that set his hair heavy against his face in beautiful tangles of curls.

It takes just a moment for Hannibal to realize that the click, the soft exhale was his own and not the man who had shared his space for so long. He blinks, a rapid flutter of black and white, and presses a palm to his mouth. Heavy, warm, silencing. A self-soothing gesture of his thumb under his eye as Will had touched him before.

He thinks of the way he’d smelled, beneath the new life, and behind his ears another cymbal crashes.

Will charges into Dolarhyde to topple him backward, and the glass sinks deep into Will’s arm and screeches sharp against bone. They hit the ground hard and Will lands a few good blows but the killer is enormous, his size only outdone by the desperate conviction with which he fights.

Will hears Molly calling his name through the scream of his own adrenaline and he watches, as if in slow-motion, as Dolarhyde hears Molly’s voice, too.

_I am not in the habit of sharing things that are mine._

Will shouts for them to run.

It’s enough. The hesitation finds Will on his back and he connects a kick with Dolarhyde’s chest, but even with force behind it it’s not enough to do more than knock the wind from him, breath already panting in ragged gasps past his cleft palate.

_Have you considered a disfigurement?_

When Dolarhyde raises the shard above him, the glass flashes bright, and Will thinks of the sun against the river’s surface.

Flooding over more ground, no longer seeping into it but running over. Drowning the earth.

How quickly good intentions turn to evil, how easily nature can turn life into death without even changing its gifts.

The steps falter again but Hannibal’s heart keeps the beats between, up as it so rarely is, breaths now harsh between them to fill in the silence.

_More._

“No.”

_Please._

“No.”

Each exhalation a denial, a push, a plea for Will to realize that it has gone far enough, that it will simply grow and build and flood and kill everything if it was allowed to continue.

_Hannibal, don’t._

A deep sigh, a softening. A lull before the storm, and then Hannibal drops his hand over the side of the bed in quiet resignation, fingers flexing and relaxing in gentle gestures of comfort. He imagines running his knuckles down Will’s face. He imagines the dampness of tears there, as there had been the night he’d crawled close and pressed his weight to him as they both lay bleeding.

In his mind, Hannibal’s hand comes away red.

Another sound clicks in his throat and he arches his neck on a forced-slow exhale.

_I told you to run._

Will hears the clicks as though from a great distance and feels the reverberations that will tear them all as much asunder as the Dragon has done to Will. He counts four shots and begs in choking silence for Molly to take the last two, to be certain it’s finally ended.

The world goes black as Will feels the tenebrous waters rising thick around him.

Breathe, Will hears from far away. He can’t see Molly now for all the darkness in his eyes and he wants to let go, to let go and to stay still and to let himself slip beneath the waters that have been lapping at his feet for so long now, but he hears her again. Breathe, Will. He hears her and he tries and his breath leaves him in a keening wail.

_I will hear you sob my name._

She’s calling for help when Will reaches out across the floor to find the body still warm beside him. It’s not the one he wants, not the one that he’s nightly relived reaching for again and again in hopes that they could finally just go together.

It’s then that Will realizes that he’s drowning, not dreaming.

_I gave you a gift._

There is no warmth in these final notes, just cold and stillness and Will tries to draw away from it but it’s inside him, now. It’s in the rawness he feels rent across his face and it’s in the pool he can feel growing beneath him tacky and thick against his skin and he resists, trembling, as it tries to claim him.

_Mine._

_You and I._

_No one else._

The strings fade. The brass and reeds and flutes fade. Now just the slow thick pounding of Hannibal's heart against his ribs.

One-two-three-four.

The speed his heart had kept when he ripped the tongue from the nurse's mouth. The speed it has regularly kept. Still and slow and calm.

As he had remained when Will had told him he didn't think of him. As Hannibal had watched the door slide closed.

As it had beaten when he'd murmured words he knew Will would hear despite the barrier, and claim he had not.

_"You will."_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you everyone, for reading, for commenting, for kudos'ing, for [voting](http://poll.fm/4u4p5), for being so generally amazing
> 
> one more chapter to go <3


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The house is quiet but for the hum of a fan to push the night air in from the outside, his doors left open and screens unlocked.
> 
> Hoping, perhaps, that he’ll hear a mirror break and he won’t have to fight anymore.
> 
> He hears a knock instead.

Years pass, and Will still exists.

“Live” is the word they use when they speak of him now in the Bureau, followed by whispered warnings about what happens when you let yourself get too deep.

The keenest hound who ever ran in Jack Crawford’s pack, who chased the scent of a fox off the cliff as the fox looked on in curiosity.

The word seems unfair, in Will’s consideration. Exaggerated, to title his inability to die at his own hand and refusal to die at the hands of others with anything nearing such grandiosity as “living.”

He exists. Wakes. Drinks. Works. Drinks. And occasionally does enough of those things that it allows him an uneasy few hours of sleep before he stirs again to pace through the house in which he and his few memories remain, the ones he can’t make himself drunk enough to forget.

Loneliness itself is a foreign concept now. Something that once was sought out, then accepted, and now is forced upon him. The scars, etched deeper than his skin, draw questions, everywhere but the machine shop where he shows up once or twice a week to drop off a motor and pick up a new one. Even there, they stare at the angry dark lines that plunge and cross his features like shadows unmoving, and he feels their attention and the whispers that follow like insects crawling across his skin.

No calls, or only very rarely, which go to the machine and are not returned. He received letters for a time, condolences and questions from students and unread missives written in elegant script that went into the trash. He finds himself one night, like every other, deep in a rough whiskey drunk and wondering what they said, and if re-reading them would really matter anyway.

Cruelty and taunts, he tells himself, is what they invariably contained, and he takes another long sip with ice clinking loud against the glass. The newspaper, several weeks old now, is spread out before him on the oil-stained carpet in the living room, empty but for a couch and the motor he was meant to work on that day before the bottle called his attention sooner.

**HANNIBAL THE CANNIBAL ESCAPES** shouts the headline that Will reads again and again, the image included beneath it in the story torn out in a fit of rage that Will can’t remember now.

The house is quiet but for the hum of a fan to push the night air in from the outside, his doors left open and screens unlocked.

Hoping, perhaps, that he’ll hear a mirror break and he won’t have to fight anymore.

He hears a knock instead.

The normalcy doesn’t even register, too close to a life he doesn’t have anymore or want to remember. But it comes again, inevitable, and Will leaves the bottle on the floor before standing.

It’s unlocked, as the rest of the doors, but this one left closed. The visitor he waits for won’t use a door, won’t knock politely or show himself at all. He will prowl in, predator that he is, and take the life that has been eluding him for these last seven years.

Beyond the door stands a man, tall and put together, a tailored suit in light gray, a fitted lighter shirt beneath. Silver streaks his hair to match, at the temples mostly, but making its way lightly through the middle as well.

His skin is lighter than Will’s now, though it hadn’t always been. The Florida sun had taken its toll on Will’s pale form and turned it darker.

Before him, Hannibal Lecter stands as he once did, like a phantom from the past, with a heavy coat absolutely unnecessary but inevitably present over his arm, his shoulders back and head tilted just so as he watches the former profiler take him in. He doesn’t smile, but there is a desperation in his eyes, before it’s shuttered away, that Will feels tug against him.

“Hello, Will,” he murmurs.

Will turns. He can't look at this spectre before him, refuses to see it and thinks of Hamlet and his ghosts and how well that ended up for everyone involved and Will laughs suddenly, dragging a hand over his face, over the beard he's grown out to try to hide his scars.

A delirium, drawing fast across Will's body and pulling tremors out of his limbs as he turns back into the empty house.

He wonders if he’s finally swallowed enough scotch to make this happen, to draw his imagination out into things he can see in front of him.

He wonders if it's possible to pretend so hard that you can't ever stop.

And in wordless relief a sharp, shuddering sob - a single note of anguish - escapes when he feels that ghostly presence still lingering pale and grey behind him.

“Please,” Will insists quietly. “Please just do it fast.”

There comes no sound of a knife being drawn, no sound of a gun being cocked, nothing at all that would suggest a conventional weapon. And Will supposes it would be too much of a mercy to ask for something so simple.

He hears only the quiet click of the door as it’s closed, the shuffling of the heavy coat being laid on the nearest surface that isn’t the floor… and the old routines make him almost laugh with their absurdity. Still so clear and proper, still, after all this, someone who refuses to enter a house unless he’s properly dressed for the occasion.

“I’m not here to kill you, Will,” Hannibal says softly, and his voice sounds closer.

Will doesn't turn towards the voice, accented and soft and so brutally familiar that it feels like it's ripping him open all over again. He leaves his back to him. Lets him have it.

No resistance, now. No fight left in one who once fought so hard against the world.

An anger flares, sulfuric, at Hannibal's words, and dies back into ashes on his tongue, acrid grey.

"After everything?" Will snaps, fingers tightening into fists to try to fight the trembling. "After - after everything..."

Furious, quaking anger that cuts sharp across his belly, across the scars stretched tight on his face and arms and inside beneath his ribs where the deepest wounds bleed fresh as though he were a corpse in the presence of his murderer.

"I'm asking," Will breathes, attempting to steady himself. "Asking this time."

Laying himself bare before Hannibal and passing him a knife, trusting that despite everything he will hit true.

“No.”

It’s soft, gentle to juxtapose Will’s angry, desperate words. And for a moment the silence between them rings louder than their words.

“I cannot kill you, Will.” An interesting choice of words Will doesn’t want to explore at present, if ever. He knows well enough he has survived more times than he should ever have. He hates that, hates the cruelty of whatever god, if any, existed to make this possible.

“And I will not.”

Hannibal is much closer now, Will can feel him against his back as he once had sought to in comfort. Now it feels too hot, too close, and yet still the man hasn’t touched him, hasn’t made the effort to.

_Because you don’t matter_ , the voice at the back of his mind whispers, _because you never did_.

"’Unworthy’," Will seethes through his teeth. "’Unwanted’."

The words cutting as deep as the day Hannibal spoke them, years before but etched forever inside Will's skull, played again and again like a broken record skipping and repeating.

Endless.

"Worth nothing," Will reminds him softly. "Do you remember? I remember."

He turns towards him, fingers curled so tight against his palms that his nails leave white crescents against his skin, without looking towards his face, eyes averted past.

"You've already given me so many gifts.”

Hannibal’s eyes are soft, and he still refuses to touch, refuses to push Will over that brink until he falls there himself. Not coercion so much as the knowledge that without getting there himself, jumping himself, falling and flying and meeting it with eyes open, Will would only ever see this as a concept, never a reality.

Years and years on and still he is Hannibal’s favourite subject.

“Years ago, I asked you to kill me,” Hannibal reminds him softly, aims his words against the wall he feels pressed against Will’s lungs, against the wall he knows is curled around his heart and mind.

“I asked and you refused me.” He presses his lips gently together, takes a breath, “So I made you. The only way I knew you would. I made you, Will. With four bullets that did not hit home.”

He steps the half-step closer and watches Will.

“Selfish,” he murmurs. “Manipulative. A self-diagnosis projected onto the one person I knew would allow it. Projected because I knew there was no other way you would allow yourself to hurt me, and allow me to go with you.”

Hannibal is close enough that Will can feel his breath, warm against his skin, the nearness of his being so painfully familiar even after all the time, distance, anguish that's ripped them apart.

Mere inches between them that to Will feel as insurmountable miles.

"You've taken everything from me."

Will keeps his face turned, his gaze focused past Hannibal.

"Every time you've come into my life," he whispers, "you've taken everything. I don't have anything left for you to take this time, except me."

They’re quiet, Will’s breathing slow but stuttered, uneven, pained. Hannibal’s is near-silent, just the gentle rise and fall of his chest as it expands, contracts, again and again.

When he raises his hand, it’s a soft touch, fingers barely splayed to run against Will’s jaw, over the sharpness he remembers there, over the stubble that no longer scratches but feels soft against Hannibal’s hand.

The fingers curl, seek gently for the dip in the skin, the scar now smooth from years of healing and sun and forgetting. Perhaps a denial of a memory would be more accurate, than forgetting. Neither have forgotten.

His palm settles flat and warm against Will’s face and when he struggles, Hannibal just steps closer, enough to curl one arm around Will’s head, hand soft in his hair, fingers just barely scraping the scalp. Holding but not restraining.

Eyes closing suddenly, Will exhales all the air he was holding tight in his chest, collapsing inward. His breath hitches, and he leans in close, pressing his forehead to Hannibal's shoulder as a shudder shakes him violently.

His loneliness unfurls in waves of black as the river floods the shores.

"Please," Will begs softly. "Please don't do this to me again."

Will's hands clench in the front of Hannibal's shirt and he gasps past the stiff sobs that cut his breath short, that quiet his words so soft he's not even sure if he says them or thinks them. It doesn’t matter. He hates himself when he does, and he thinks of Molly and how right she always was.

"I missed you.”

Hannibal’s eyes close, heart beating slowly, a practiced, careful pace, hoping Will would match it as he used to, when he would panic from a nightmare and find Hannibal just there, and move to him on his own and press himself to the beat, constant and living and there. Timing himself to it to calm down.

“Breathe,” he whispers, ducking his head to take in the smell of him. Sweat and oil and heat, and beneath, just Will again. The softness, bare-spiciness of him. Entirely unique.

“Breathe, Will.” He wraps his other arm around Will’s middle and pulls them closer together, enough that there is no space between them now, just Will’s hands trembling where they hold so tightly his knuckles would be hurting. Just the clothes they wear.

His brows furrow at the utterly anguished, broken sound Will makes and he presses his lips against the top of his head, a grounding kiss, a reassurance.

_Here, now, you._

"I was happy," Will gasps, shuddering beneath the touch, the scars on his forearms starkly white as he clings fiercely to Hannibal's shirt.

"With you. Then with them." He shakes his head but doesn't draw away, doesn't allow space between them for a knife to pass. “I had a family," Will breathes with disbelief, and he jerks suddenly to draw away from Hannibal, eyes narrowing sharply, spitefully. "You - you tried to kill them. You would have killed them.”

“So would you,” Hannibal responds calmly, eyes down just below where Will’s gaze rests before he blinks and their eyes meet properly. “When you took the work again, when the call got too strong for you to resist. You returned to the field. For Jack Crawford. For memories.”

His brows furrow gently and he strokes over the scar on Will’s face again, watches him visibly jerk at the feeling of it being touched. He doubts it’s from physical pain.

“You save lives, Will. There is no greater thing than that,” he sighs. “But it is not a path you can take with a family.”

Will twists away from the touch across his face, flinches from it, with an immolating anger fueled by years of cutting down any new growth he could find and the whiskey still hot on his tongue. He doesn’t argue with Hannibal - doesn’t afford him the pleasure of playing clever with Will’s words - and doesn't acknowledge the guilt that Hannibal's words tear through him.

"It doesn't matter now.” Braced, for sharp words or sharp blades to sever his last threads. He observes Hannibal’s coat over the arm of the couch and closes his eyes against the absurdity of it, of him being here, and of Will remaining yet alive so near to him. Dizzy, he loosens his grip to wrap his arms softly around Hannibal instead and sinks against him.

"I tried to give it all to you, once. Do you remember? And you wouldn't take that. You waited. You waited until I had more, and you took that instead,” Will whispers, desperate. “Just take what's left.”

Hannibal's jaw works slowly and he strokes Will’s hair, cards fingers through the curls the way Will used to relish and arch into like a cat on sleepy early mornings.

He doesn't remind Will how he had gone to Jack, had offered to betray Hannibal to him just to 'give him something', how his offer to run had come after the fact, not once before. He doesn't remind Will that he had given Will just as much of himself, had given Will everything and the man had taken it all.

He doesn't tell Will about the sleepless nights in the hospital, in prison after. He says nothing about the way it had felt, like a phantom limb, no longer having Will near him.

He doesn't say how the only way he felt he could let Will go was by killing him and following, and how it was the most painful thing in the world to witness, even by proxy.

"You promised me summer by the river, do you remember?" Hannibal says softly. “That we would go together, there, the dogs meandering between us as you would fish and I would read."

He feels Will shiver against him, feels his arms tighten around him.

“I remember.”

Will sees them there, years ago in a lifetime that never happened. Hannibal stretched long in the grass, observing Will standing deep in the water with more curiosity than afforded to his book, and Will caught stealing looks at Hannibal along the shore as the dogs vie for his attention. No one else in the world like them, when they were strong and fierce and beautiful together. No one else who could ever understand what moved them.

Beneath his trembling arms Will feels how much thinner Hannibal has become, lean and sharp in contrast to the ferocity that Will remembers, or imagines he remembers. He looks up, just a little, and tries to imagine Hannibal covered with blood in his escape but instead finds his attention drawn to the grayness in Hannibal's hair, the new wrinkles lining his face, the tension he carries set intractable and hard in his jaw.

_What did you do, Will?_

Struck first. Drew blood when Hannibal least expected it. Paid for it again and again, in pounds of flesh. Mutually assured destruction of everything they've ever loved, leaving nothing but themselves.

"There aren't -" Will stammers and the words sound like an apology. "There aren’t dogs anymore. I told her to take them when they left. For him." He swallows hard.

"They would've been happy to see you."

He had wondered at the lack of furry attention when he'd arrived, wondered why Will had chosen such loneliness when he had always been surrounded by the gentle animals. The punishment seems unjustly cruel to him.

Will turns his face into Hannibal's shoulder again, to hide his scars and feel the soft material against his skin. He wonders where Hannibal found it, wonders at his compulsive tendency to seek out only the things he deems best. Will shivers at the thought.

He considers that if the worst that happens now is that Hannibal kills him again - third time's the charm - then at least he's finally ready to accept that gift. A hesitation, fingers curling against Hannibal's back as he buries his face closer into the curve of his neck.

"I could still show you how to make coffee." Will can barely breathe the words before they hitch sharply and he shudders.

The arms around Will tighten and Hannibal pulls him impossibly closer, one hand drawing soft nails up and down Will's back, the other grasping his hair. He holds him until the shudder passes, until slowly he starts to adopt Hannibal's breathing,  calm his own.

"I doubt I would ever be as good at coffee," he admits, words turned soft in the foreign language, the French unfamiliar in this house.

Will feels the ground move beneath him and would drop to the floor, drunk and dizzy and overwhelmed by the memories that flood over him, if not for Hannibal's arms secure around him. He feels Will shake, grow weak and then strong again, digging into the embrace so hard it forces Hannibal to take a step to steady himself.

Safety in this language, that since Will first needed it he's only ever shared with Hannibal, the shape of words that were claimed for them and no one else.

In broken French, the Creole patois of muddled influence and half-words and careless disregard, Will apologizes. Again and again, as he once did against the carpet with Hannibal drawing the life from him with harsh fingers and as Will drew from Hannibal with harsher words.

He breathes them in staggered gasps until his voice grows raw and then he goes motionless against him, but for the occasional jerked breath that snares itself up out of him, and still he hides his face from Hannibal as his doctor strokes soothing fingers through his hair.

Long minutes pass, hours maybe for as infinite as it feels to Will, before a dry sound shakes from him that almost sounds like a laugh, bleak humored as ever.

"I haven't been practicing my Chopin," Will sighs to him in their language, and he lifts a hand to run along Hannibal's features, to study them as though for the first time, without looking, without letting himself be seen.

Hannibal turns into the touch, takes the warmth offered with it, wanted but still unexpected with the way both had battered each other like waves batter the land.

They have both grown old in their suffering, time moving faster for them alone to draw lines and gray across them, though not enough years had passed, quite, to warrant it.

He feels the apology pressed to his skin as it had pressed to his chest, heavy and hot and agonizing in its genuineness. He wishes he could express his own as profoundly, but they stick in his throat as words.

_Meaningless words._

With Will it has always been actions that he registered.

"Nor have I," he assures him in soft jest, and brings up one hand to cup Will's fingers as he turns to kiss them.

Relearning.

Forgiving.

Apologizing.

Will presses his fingers grown rough and calloused with work against Hannibal's mouth, allows the tenderness that stirs a surface memory of the last time Hannibal held him this closely. He makes a small sound, pain, as he feels a tear hot and sharp across his stomach so sudden that it takes him a moment to register that it's not the knife but its memory, digging deep into him.

"Why did you come?"

The rest of the question hangs unasked. Why, if not to bring Will mercy, to end his forced solitude. Years spent waiting with no attachments or obligations, all ties severed in preparation so that he wouldn't cause trouble to anyone when he could finally go.

When he would finally stay still and no longer have to force himself to breathe.

_I cannot kill you._

"Why?" Will demands again, a surge of hurt that forces him away from the warmth of Hannibal's arms. Driving himself away as he has from everything and everyone else, Will averts his gaze to drag himself towards the bottle left on the floor, grasping it in a shaking hand.

He finishes it.

Hannibal sighs, watches Will consume the contents of the bottle like water, not spirits. What could he possibly tell him?

He has missed Will. The ache of it eating away at him for years, like rust. Gnawing and consuming, reliving moments and old promises and what ifs.

He had come because every time he had tried to sever Will from himself he had been turning the blade to his own skin. Because he had gone, more than he should have, in his mind to cold winter mornings in Wolf Trap, to waking warm and pressed close to Will's body, loose-limbed in rest.

"Because you own me, Will, like no one else."

Will grimaces at the answer and sets the bottle on the shelf beside him, amongst little paper animals and other bottles equally empty.

Dust has gathered.

"Then that makes you all I've got," Will responds bitterly, running a hand over his mouth to hide the way his scars twist across the black-humored smile that appears and vanishes just as quickly.

Hannibal lets his eyes linger on the bottles and dust, the origami creatures he had made Will throughout the years that he had been certain had been burned or torn.

A whisper, a breath, dire amusement drawn from a consuming darkness.

"So what happens tomorrow?" Will asks softly.

Hannibal takes a step forward, watches Will stay as he is, unmoving, waiting.

"Tomorrow we will wake late," he tells him. Another step.

"You won't have slept. Worried you'd wake alone. But in the early hours sleep will take you, as it always has."

Two more steps, carefully measured. Close, now.

"Then you will walk the house, opening all the doors to the summer air.” One step more brings him toe to toe with Will.

"Make coffee," he continues. “Turn when I join you in the kitchen and wonder why I'm here. Perhaps ask me again."

He rests a hand on Will’s shoulder, sliding warm to his neck, holding there, thumb soft against the skin.

"I'll give you the same answer."

An explosive sigh leaves Will as he lets the words press themselves into him, into all the scars and bruises and wounds unseen that yet bleed. He turns his face into Hannibal’s hand, lets him feel the marks etched in his skin.

Eyes closed, Will breathes soft against Hannibal’s palm.

“You’ll stay.” A statement that aches like a question. Will fights the dizziness that swells through him, and wraps his hands around Hannibal’s wrist to speak against his hand. “I think there’s food,” he whispers. “I’ll make eggs. Burn them. Just like before. And you’ll pretend to like them. Just like before.”

There’s only two ways this ends, Will knows, and as Hannibal’s thumb brushes soft against his cheek and draws another pale sigh from Will, he chooses to believe the one that hurts more, a tender bruise spreading across his ribs.

“I’ll show you the beach. Just out back. It’s ours,” Will says, and he doesn’t linger on the word long enough to wonder whose he actually means. “You’ll have to leave your coat.” Another shuddering sigh, muffled by turning his face further into Hannibal’s hand, letting it cover his mouth and catch his breath.

“You’ll get sunburnt,” Will jests, gently. “You’re so pale now.”

Hannibal accepts the torrent of words - unending and breathless, a desperate grounding that he knows is keeping Will’s eyes dry. He listens, lets his lips tilt in a smile, brows draw just enough.

He moves his hand, just gently, and tilts Will’s face up, leans close, and draws his lips over the scars his fingers had traced, memorizing them this way as well as Will keeps talking.

"I'll tell you to give up your suits but you won't, even in this heat you won't do it."

Lips draw beneath Will's eye, soft, move to the corner of it then back down. Will's hands have slipped to pull Hannibal close now, fingers tight in the fabric.

"Breathe," Hannibal whispers.

Will sighs shaking against Hannibal’s cheek, keeps his eyes closed as he feels Hannibal’s mouth move across his skin, familiar in some places and unfamiliar in others where the nerves prickle beneath scar tissue.

“You’ll make a list. I don’t - I don’t keep much here,” he says, “but I’ll go to the store and you can cook for me again. And I’ll get in the way when I try to help and you’ll let me.”

He turns, beard brushing soft against Hannibal’s cheek, just enough to catch the corner of his mouth beneath his lips. A sound tears itself from Will as they kiss. He pulls him tighter, nearer, fast against him and it deepens and Will has to brace himself against the wall to stop from crumbling beneath it. Only drawing away enough to catch a breath, foreheads pressed together.

“You’ll stay.”

“Yes.”

The word sends another shiver through Will and Hannibal holds him close, holds him still and kisses him again, one hand against his face, stroking there, holding, the other at Will’s side to keep him steady.

He can taste the whiskey on his tongue, the sharp tang of the alcohol that he knows is swirling through Will’s system, filling his blood and warming it. He wonders how long and how much Will has been drinking to be upright and coherent after a full bottle. He wonders if this is his first.

He knows it will matter in the morning, he knows it will matter when he starts finding the bottles and emptying them into the sink. He knows it will matter then. But now all that matters is that Will’s heart beats hard against him, warm, real, alive.

_His._

Will wants to tell him everything. How he thought of him not just often, but constantly, how he felt Hannibal near him warm sometimes and cold at others when he woke and how there was no one there, how he read his publishings and read about him helping the FBI again and read when he escaped and how certain Will was that he was gone when he didn’t come right away.

How certain that small voice scratching against the inside of his skull sounds even now, when it warns Will that there will always be a knife waiting at the end of this.

Words fail him now, too heavy on his tongue and so he snares Hannibal’s hand instead and presses it to his stomach. Lets him trace the raised scar that curves there to soothe away how much it still hurts, an echo of the way their separation felt. Phantom limbs, still present but forever out of sight.

He shudders as he pushes Hannibal’s hand beneath his shirt, and his own find their way to the buttons of Hannibal’s, clumsy as he works them free to press his palms against his skin.

To feel the wounds he left in kind, and gasp against Hannibal’s mouth with sudden violent relief that they each missed their marks again and again.

“Tell me,” Will sighs against Hannibal’s mouth, fingers curling against his skin as though to rub away the scars his bullets left there. “Tell me what happens next week.”

Hannibal’s heart speeds up. His breathing stutters against Will and he closes his eyes to this, to feel this, remember it. He splays his hand over Will’s stomach as he had so many times before, finding him softer, gentler, finally allowed to relax from a painstaking regime, and knowing the suffering Will had put himself through instead.

“Next week we leave,” he whispers. “We go. Away from here, away from this and its heavy memories.”

He presses Will a little more insistently against the wall behind him, lets his hand slide higher just to bring his other down to hold Will there too as he turns his head to keep kissing the scars on his face as though he can kiss them away.

“Marie-Galante, Saint Martin, Tromelin, Grande-Terre,” he whispers the words like a mantra, promises against Will’s skin.

Will scarcely registers the names that Hannibal breathes against him, and loops his arms tight around Hannibal's neck. His cheeks burn scarlet under the attention, the insistent apologies kissed against his scars and Will pulls him closer still.

"Anywhere," Will agrees, broken French in the tremor of his voice. "Just take me with you this time."

He knows they're looking for him, a high-alert that certainly has become international by now. The FBI had appeared at his doorstep when Hannibal first broke free and he had nothing for them but laughter. They'd insisted on hanging around for a week, before finally leaving. They won't come again soon, maybe they'll call, but he's no longer a priority for them.

For anyone.

Except Hannibal.

"Someplace warm," Will whispers, and a laugh, pained, spills from him at the memories that surface. "Only us.”

His hand finds Hannibal’s pressed over his scar, and Will presses their hands together instead.

“Tell me.”

A sigh, slow and deliberate to calm his breathing, and Hannibal turns his face against Will’s again, gentle, cheek to cheek to feel the soft breaths against his skin.

“Someplace warm,” he confirms. “Somewhere forgotten and quiet with no winter.”

He draws his thumb over Will’s knuckles as softly as he had over his face, over his scars, finding new ones there too, new ones he will have to kiss away late at night when Will lets him.

“Someplace where a pack of dogs will go unnoticed.”

A frown, faint, against Hannibal's cheek. Too close to a nerve still exposed and raw. Too close to everything he's tried - is trying - so hard to forget.

Too much expectation that Will doesn't trust himself to fulfill, or even survive to fulfill.

Will runs his fingers through Hannibal's hair, chasing the silver streaks in it, and doesn't argue. The intent is understood and he kisses soft against the corner of Hannibal's eye, the lines there drawn deeper than before.

"You can grow your grapes there," Will suggests gently. "You'll have enough sun for them."

He curls his fingers over Hannibal's and shifts unsteadily from beneath him to find his way to the couch. Not the bed - Will still smells oranges there, on the sheets, and he's not sure he could stand it right now, knowing how right she was all along.

Will sits slowly, tension curled in his limbs, an ache of wear and age and exhaustion beyond his years. He rubs the memory from his eyes of sprawling languid across a couch much finer than this one, flushed and grinning with a book across his lap with Hannibal watching him.

Lifetimes ago. Will thinks of the dogs again, and his quiet scheming, once, to infiltrate Hannibal's house with them, and runs his hands back through his hair.

Hannibal follows, careful to give Will his space for the moment, to allow the memories to settle, ebb back. He keeps his own at bay, he will find time for them later, when Will has settled into uneasy rest and he can keep his eyes open and on the sky that isn’t filled with light pollution. Or less so than the cities he has been in.

He settles beside the couch, not on it. One knee against the carpet the other pressing gently to the couch cushions. He stays lower than Will, looks up in a way he hadn’t when they had first met and Will had taken to slinking around his library above the office. In a way he hadn’t until much, much later. Lifting his chin, not just his eyes, vulnerable here, for him.

“Perhaps,” he says, replying to Will’s soft words. “Perhaps you will finally learn the difference between wine and good wine."

Will gives him a dubious look, tinged with quiet amusement, and draws Hannibal’s fingertips to his mouth, lets them rest there beneath his breath.

Studying Hannibal, now, searching his expression. His presence, here, after so long. Will feels a metronomic tension through the haze and tries to resist it and fails.

He sees Hannibal, lying on the ground beneath him, breathing his name in a wet sigh choked with blood.

Sees Hannibal leaning nearer him through partitions, maddened with desperation to be nearer him.

Sees Hannibal as he imagined him daily, sometimes hourly, sometimes even more than that until Will could drink enough to make it stop. Sees him caged and alone, his brilliant mind and extraordinary senses running ragged for any stimulation he could find, for any comfort, reaching out with letter after letter in hopes of having Will near him again, even just in words.

To kill him, Will had presumed, and he finds it hard to shake the feeling now.

“I asked him,” Will begins, and the words are tight in his throat. “I asked him to give you music. Chilton. I called him one night. A year ago. Two years. I don’t remember. I was drunk,” he says, knowing it doesn’t need elucidation, “and I kept thinking about you there and -”

He stops. Swallows down the rest of his words.

“I don’t know if he ever did it. I don’t have anything here to play,” Will continues, somewhere between times, places, perceptions, asking in his own soft way what he can do now.

Hannibal’s breath stills, he holds it, waits, releases it only when his lungs burn from the effort.

He doesn’t tell Will that Chilton never played it.

“We’ll have something,” he assures him softly. “When we settle.”

He thinks of his home in Baltimore, filled with music at every hour of the day, the rooms light with it, breathing with it, alive. He wonders who lives there now. He wonders if anyone does, if it was a home that went for millions more than it was worth because it had been the home of a killer. He wonders if it was torn down, and he doesn’t ask.

He doesn’t ask about Wolf Trap.

“Jazz,” he murmurs, spreading his fingers beneath Will’s lips. “Classical. Foreign words and known ones.”

Will tries not to smile at this, and hides it behind their hands when it happens anyway, acutely aware of the pull of his skin against the movement. He wonders what happened to the rest of their records, the little collection Will had started to build with Hannibal, and stops himself as he steps onto that well-trod path.

It doesn’t matter now.

He draws his feet up onto the couch and  stretches slow across it, keeping Hannibal's hand warm against his mouth, and tucking his other arm beneath his head as the whiskey rocks through him deeper and deeper, a familiar heat that Will tries to fight now but knows he can’t.

“We can find a piano,” Will suggests, comfortable with the game between them and comfortable with the voice inside that whispers still of destruction. “A harpsichord might be harder.”

“A harpsichord will be more conspicuous, yes,” Hannibal agrees softly, brings his other hand up to stroke Will’s hair as he slowly starts to succumb to the alcohol’s soothing effects. Now that adrenaline no longer cools his blood and anger no longer heats it.

“You speak a lot of languages,” Will observes, still hiding quiet amusement behind their hands, eyes closing. “I read a thing.” A pause, curious. “I didn’t know.”

He watches Will’s eyes droop, feels the way he both turns into the touch against his hair and presses his face to Hannibal’s other hand. Like he’s memorizing him just as soundly as Hannibal is him.

He wonders what else Will had read about him. He had remained, to Chilton’s annoyance, utterly enigmatic with his replies, wrote articles about ailments and mental illnesses that were not related to him. His entire entertainment had been keeping that obnoxious man curious.

“I could teach you,” he murmurs in French, smiles when Will hums.

Will settles, a gentle maneuver, into the couch where he's slept more nights than not. He traces his lips soft against Hannibal's hand, quiet amusement.

"I still leave my socks on the floor," he cautions mildly, and without warning, a fierce loneliness snares fast and sharp and his voice is tight again. His fingers curl against Hannibal's and he exhales hard.

"I missed you. I missed you every time I dropped them. Every time I've had scotch. Miles Davis."

He swallows hard, dry. "I missed you so fucking much.”

He forces himself to breathe, to settle out the roughness of his pulse again, and sighs embarrassed, brows furrowing when Hannibal's hand just twists gently in his hair. His eyes close beneath the touch so long removed and just as quickly, he forces them open again.

Fear, acute, that if he lets them close too long that Hannibal will be gone again.

“Don’t go.”

Hannibal’s jaw works before he smiles, watches Will’s eyes track the motion, watches them try to read a lie in it through the haze of alcohol and exhaustion.

“Where would I go?” he asks softly.

Will reaches out, lets their fingers finally part, fall away from the barrier he had made in front of his face with their joined hands and press his to Hannibal's cheek instead. He draws him in gently, to feel their mouths meet again and quiet the disbelief that still pulls tight across his chest.

That Hannibal came back for him.

That he didn’t come back to kill him.

That they'll make it out of here.

That it won't all end in the blood and anguish that fate seems to spur them tirelessly toward.

All that matters through the darkness gathering behind his eyes is the mouth pressed against his. Even if it's the last time, even if he goes again. Hannibal is here and Hannibal is with him and Will shifts a little, to make room on the couch beside him.

Discomfort, strangeness from so long apart coaxes soft words from him. "There's... a bed. Upstairs. If you wanted to, instead. It might be better for you. You can have it. I can't - I don't sleep there."

Hannibal hums, pushes himself to sit on the couch at Will’s feet, to lie down beside him in the small space offered. He says nothing of the bed, nothing of the other rooms that have haunted Will for years, that have haunted Hannibal’s dreams as he had created them; Will with someone else, Will away from him and lost to him.

Against him, Will shivers again, says nothing, but moves to burrow against Hannibal as he used to so often, cradled against his shoulder.

Around them the doors remain open, the air just a little cooler with evening but not cold, and neither want to stand to close them.

Will falls asleep first, breaths even and slow, and brow relaxed in rest. Hannibal draws a hand over it, wonders how long it’s been since Will had slept soundly.

Will wakes four times. All of them harsh jerks to consciousness. All of them soothed by soft words and gentle hands.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow... it feels very strange calling an end on our very first series (that was meant to be a one-shot). It's been an incredible ride, bringing them here, suffering with them, loving them... the headcanons we have about them are endless and range from genuine scenes to just silly things like cuddles, like talking and touches shared between them. Now that we've managed to build our own headcanon for them, that's become easier. So... the series is finished, fully, but... the headcanons haven't and we will keep writing those, if you are willing and wanting to read them.
> 
> Thank you thank you thank you to everyone who commented, left kudos, bookmarked or even saw this in passing. Your support has been overwhelming (we still can't believe we were nominated for best fanfics in the Hannibal Blog Awards, that's insanely cool!) and utterly invaluable.
> 
> We will keep writing for as long as we both breathe, I think, so more is to come.
> 
> <3 - [Whiskey & Blood](http://wwhiskeyandbloodd.tumblr.com)


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